Semiconductor based lighting devices may take many forms, including laser diodes and light emitting diodes. These devices generally emit light in response to energy differentials between layers of semiconductor materials doped in particular ways. They have many advantages over traditional arc lamp-based sources, being more robust, generally cooler, and consuming less power.
In some examples of these lighting devices, the semiconductor light sources are arranged in x-y grids of light sources, where x and y could be any integer 1 or higher. In other examples, several of these x-y grids may be arranged into larger x-y grids to provide arrays of light sources. Because of the ability to mount these devices in wiring patterns as desired, the lighting devices have some configurable and customizable aspects to them.
Currently, there are some limitations on the customization and configurability of these arrays of light sources. Typically, once the arrays are set, tested and configured at manufacture, the resulting lighting product ships to the customer with limited control or monitoring able to be done by the customer. A lighting product generally consists of the array or arrays of light sources mounted in packaging with the necessary components, such as power controls such as circuit substrates, thermal controls such as thermal switches, light source controls such as ON/OFF, intensity, etc. The customer has very little control over the operation or configurability of the product once received. While this ‘plug and play’ mode is generally desirable, it makes servicing malfunctioning products difficult and prevents the customers from having flexible lighting products.
In some solutions, there is a controller unit that can connect to the lighting product through a connector. This controller may be able to make some minor modifications to the operation of the lighting product. However, these controllers are typically large units separate from the lighting product and have very limited functionality.